Um… what’s the point in telling us to avoid spoilers if you then go ahead and spoil that? 
2 Likes
Well, I’d take it with a grain of salt. We already know why there’s no Isaac Hempstead Wright or Kristian Nairn in this season, and it’s not because Bran and Hodor are dead or anything.
2 Likes
With as many characters on the show, I didn’t think it would spoil much. Sorry.
1 Like
But we did get at least a glimpse of her, in the bath. Myranda was trying to scare her by relating the fates of other girlfriends of Ramsay’s, and Sansa was having none of it.
It’s not right to refer to rape as a “setback,” but I’m sure this experience will not break Sansa anywhere close to as much as Theon’s treatment broke him. Not because it’s less awful, but because she has some inner steel (perhaps a Stark trait, as Westerosi might be inclined to believe) that is utterly lacking in Theon.
It’s a setback of character development.
“Actors”? But GoT is a documentary isn’t it?
“Development” isn’t always in a positive direction.
Repeat degradation for the purpose of titillation and shock value is just a dumb, lowbrow way to further the plot when they’ve run out of ideas.
And that’s a uselessly cynical evaluation of the creators’ motivations. “What are we gonna do with Sansa?” “I dunno… rape her?” “Sure, might as well. How else could we possibly keep her arc interesting?” Sansa’s been valued (by most of the characters in the show who stay alive long enough to wield any power) solely as a pawn and symbol of possession of the North. This is her third time being married off by someone hoping to obtain some political advantage thereby, and it’s really only the dumbest of luck that’s kept her virginal and relatively unharmed for as long as she was. Nobody but Brienne is doing anything to preserve her safety and happiness (and Brienne’s run into every red light and wrong turn on her way to do so), so it’s actually become somewhat unbelievable that Sansa has stayed relatively unharmed for as long as she has. Certainly she’s been mostly passive about it (not that I blame her, as she’s been placed in horrific and terrifying circumstances fairly steadily ever since her direwolf got framed some four years ago) unlike her sister Arya, who has been proactive from the get-go. The fact remains that Sansa is still a child being forced to grow up fast under unimaginably awful circumstances.
We didn’t need to see her get raped, but the way this world and this story has been created, and the character that Sansa has been, has almost made this event woefully inevitable. I do not imply that any of this is her fault, nor that she could have prevented it had she been as tough and wiry as her sister, or as experienced and cynical as her mother, or as ruthless as Cersei, or as strong as Brienne, or as cunning as Tyrion. Like Harry Potter became famous as The Boy Who Lived simply by not dying when Voldemort tried to kill him, Sansa might have become notable as the Virgin Princess if she’d made it to winter without being raped, since Westeros seems so hell-bent on grinding down and destroying her inch by inch and at every turn. “Out of ideas”? I don’t think that’s the case at all. It’s depressingly par for the course for GoT and Westeros in general, but as other people have pointed out, if they’d hewed closer to the book and introduced Jeyne Poole for this purpose and put her through what she went through at Ramsay’s hands in the book (which was a whole lot worse than what we saw last week), I have no doubt that a lot fewer people would be so upset with the show right now… and that’s kinda awful.
Amanda Marcotte described Sansa’s rape as an act of war, and I agree with her take on the situation.
3 Likes
Snoop? 
3 Likes
That’s the part that I find most unbelievable, actually. Sexual assault was pretty much a constant threat for women in the real-history era that is strikingly similar to this fictional story. Two marriages (well, one and a half, but IRL a king like Joffrey wouldn’t have waited until the ceremony) and one of the last members of a family that everyone is trying to kill off, and it took until this scene for physical violence to occur? That girl is the luckiest person on the planet.
I agree with you that Marcotte explained the importance of the scene well.
Many years ago, during the training program I went through to counsel rape victims, rape culture examples were discussed because that affects how victims perceive themselves, and how their loved ones perceive the crime as well. One example was that in movies/TV shows, rape scenes are almost always shot so that the viewer is a voyeur on the scene, and thus complicit in the act. In this particular GoT scene, we don’t see the rape. We don’t see her struggle or get physically violated in any way. Instead, we see how horrifying the situation is because we see it in reflection as Reek’s face gives way to Theon. This rape scene is not the hot mess that the Cersei scene was. This is not the one to get upset about.
4 Likes
I agree with you 100%. This is what bothers me when people complain that expressing the scene through shots that highlight Theon’s horror and discomfort somehow rob Sansa of agency, like she doesn’t even get the courtesy of being allowed to suffer onscreen, or that Theon’s pain and anguish is more important or relevant than her own. There’s really no way to please such complainants without removing the rape altogether, which makes for the happy result of one fewer fictional rapes in our world, but doesn’t honestly address how or why such things should be portrayed or avoided in works of art and/or entertainment.
I can’t help but feel that people are bent out of shape because it’s happening to Sansa, instead of someone else. And that’s understandable, to a degree, since we’ve watched this girl grow into a woman while her world collapses around her ears, and she’s only grown more and more sympathetic as each season passes. But it’s still a bummer, like when the world goes crazy looking for Elizabeth Smart but doesn’t even notice the disappearance of thousands of non-blonde children in any given year.
4 Likes
You realize this show isn’t set in the past, right?
1 Like
Theon was physically tortured for an extended period and then literally gelded. If anything, it is worse than what happened to Sansa and no one really complained when it was depicted.
1 Like
Well, I heard many complaints that those scenes were hard to watch, and I agree. But I don’t think that they didn’t belong in the show.
1 Like
He’s only a man though, and because patriarchy that’s ok.
1 Like
2 Likes
Because it happened in the book, and because they didn’t keep gelding people to pass the plot along.
2 Likes
Theon really complained.
3 Likes
What happened to Sansa happened in the book, just to another character pretending to be a Stark daughter whom they merged with her. They merge characters in the show all the time.
So you’re saying that everyone would be ok with this scene if it was just some nearly nameless secondary female character and not Sansa?
1 Like
